


water can heal, water can break

by crazyache



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Bloodbending, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyache/pseuds/crazyache
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avatar will not let his wife attend the trial of the dangerous criminal Yakone. A/K, slight Z/K</p>
            </blockquote>





	water can heal, water can break

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
> 
> I've always loved Katara and was incredibly disappointed to see her absence during this story arc in LoK. This is my explanation.

1.

“It’s too dangerous—you will stay and that is  _final.”_

For all Katara knows, this is the same conversation she’s heard for the last twenty years of marriage. The same empty echo of routine causes the anger to swell in her chest; even Aang can feel the air chill as he turns his back to her, his eyes a familiar dark grey cast in disappointment. But this circumstances are different—in a manner she hasn’t tried in many, many years, she rises to her feet and feels her knuckles tighten until the bones could break to dust.

The Avatar will not let his wife attend the trial of the dangerous criminal Yakone. She thinks of Hama in this moment—Aang and Sokka’s bodies writhing into their death from her fingers. She thinks of the countless lives this man has ruined. She imagines the pain she can save others from suffering…

“No, I need to be there! I can help! I can protect myself, I am the only one who can—”

“Who can  _what,_ Katara?” Aang turns violently back towards her. The wind cuts into her hair, but she doesn’t falter. There’s an almost desperate, twisted storm of frustration in his eyes—to anyone else, the sight of a towering, powerful Avatar would splinter their lungs. But all Katara sees, what she will always see, is the boy who loved her too much to let her go. “Who can bloodbend him back? That dark act is prohibited, in case you’ve forgotten. I can’t have you committing the same crimes he’s being arrested for!”

Slowly, she swallows, retreating back to her seat.

He’s ashamed. Ashamed of her.

2.

When the Avatar returns from the council trial, he finds his wife in the kitchen.

“How did it go?” she asks quietly, staring out the window instead of facing him. Her hair is down and she’s wearing her casual blue robes over navy pants. Their children laugh from the other room. He takes the cup of tea she’s prepared for him, stepping next to her but still unable to gain acceptance of her gaze.

Aang explains the criminal was sentenced to life imprisonment, but after Sokka’s reading of the council’s statement, he bloodbended the entire room immobile and nearly escaped. “But…I entered the Avatar State and stopped him. I permanently removed his bending ability and he’s now in prison. Republic City is safe now.”

He seems proud, but his wife grants him no reaction. Katara finally turns to him, lips in a straight line. “I should have been there,” is all she says icily. With a sigh, Aang shakes his head, “There was nothing you could have done, Katara. He was too powerful.”

_There is always something I can do!_ She wants to scream at him, but she just grips the counter tightly, and silently wonders when she became such a master of restraint, a skill that she had never possessed inside her being before. Is this what love is? The constant battle between silence and confession? Deciding between self-inflicting wounds versus sleeping next to a bloodied man you singlehandedly damaged?

“Besides,” Aang blows a whisp of air over his steaming tea before continuing, “It wasn’t like there was a full moon.” At this, Katara slaps the cup from Aang’s hand. It crashes against the wall.

Yes, she draws her power from the moon. But it was under broad daylight she challenged a master as a novice and struggled and lost with dignity; it was at dusk when she froze rain into icicles and made the man of her nightmares quake; it had been under a legendary comet from Agni’s breath she defeated a powerful firebender and healed a man with death and lightning fused in his veins with dirty drain water; and it was all under the relentless sun she mastered her element before the age of sixteen.

“It’s like you don’t even know who I am.”

3. 

A year passes since the incident. Eventually, she finds herself in the Fire Nation sitting next to the Fire Lord himself facing a rather lovely turtle-duck pond during her annual visit.

“Yakone has escaped prison.” She sounds less worried than bitter. Katara flicks a few more pieces of bread into the water, turning to her best friend. Zuko  _knows_ and she knows this, too. It’s been so long since the war and she’s so much wiser now, to her own despair. He understands the darkness that creaks inside her soul, tainted and black and forged by fire and blood. Just from the way Katara’s blue eyes darken, he was the first to sense the intensity of her permanent rage. The rage of children cheated of beautiful mothers and honorable fathers and happy childhoods. 

He understood this anger, too. The anger of being underestimated and misunderstood and forgotten.

_I could have done something,_ she sighs.

“I never asked to be a bloodbender,” Katara stares into their reflection, ripples from little paddling feet distorting her image. “I never asked for Sokka and Aang to outlaw it.” Her voice lowers and lowers so that Zuko must lean closer with the everlasting patience she loves in his eyes, “And I know Yakone was a master at this skill, but I am  _stronger.”_

Katara blinks with a small smile, but turns to the Fire Lord with careful preicison. With one swift motion, she bent the blood from Zuko’s arm so that it twisted behind his back. It had been so quick, but shaky, like the red liquid inside of his walls crashed around in waves. From above, the sun beat down. His eyes widen, but he bows his head and manages a laugh, “No one should ever doubt your strength, Katara.” He’s always known this. She lets go, biting her lip but with no apology—they’ve both stopped apologizing to each other years ago.

The moon has never been her primary pool of energy. It has always, always been sheer desperation for survival—for the survival of others. And if she had been there when her brother, Toph, Aang and helpless others were struck under Yakone’s grip, Katara knows he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

She was always willing to do whatever it takes. This is a fact that Aang had never been able to understand. For however much she loved his soaring spirit and the hope he carried, she would always be the first to fiercely sacrifice everything and anything for those she held close. He could never let go. This was their greatest difference. This is what she could never forgive of her husband, the Avatar.

She would have crushed Yakone’s heart and ended him.


End file.
